Monday, July 23, 2012

Criminalized for Carrying Condoms

Due
to the hard work of activists, increasing attention is being paid to the epidemic of police harassment, profiling,
brutalizing, and often murder of young Black and Latino men, who in cities like
New York are stopped at rates greater than eight times their representation in
the overall population. Last week, a special report by Human Rights Watch (HRW)
shed light on another group targeted by the police: sex workers and those who
police think “look like” sex workers, often transgender women.

HRW’s
report points out an absurd and dangerous contradiction: while city health departments hand
out tens of millions of free condoms each year, proven to prevent the spread of
HIV and other sexually-transmitted diseases, city police departments are using
the possession of condoms as evidence against those at some of the highest risk
for HIV and other STDs: sex workers.

A
study by the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene found that 14%
of male and 10% of female sex workers in the city are HIV-positive, compared
with 1.4% citywide.

The
law in many places, including New York State, both prohibits prostitution and
is vague enough in its definition of related offenses that HRW considers it “problematic from
a human rights perspective, in that [the laws regarding loitering] grant police
wide latitude to engage in unjustified interference with lawful activities
short of actual solicitation [for prostitution]. Such laws enable arbitrary and
preemptive arrests on the basis of profile or status, rather than criminal
conduct.”

In other words, police have free
rein to stop-and-frisk those they believe to be sex workers, and can then
arrest them if they find condoms on them, and use that as evidence in charges
for prostitution. This is a recipe for widespread profiling on the basis of
race, clothing and gender identity.

And it amounts to punishing sex workers and others for taking steps to protect their health and that of their partners.

By
using possession of condoms as evidence of prostitution, and harassing and
arresting suspected sex workers on this basis, the police are contributing to
the HIV/AIDS epidemic as many sex workers have stopped carrying condoms, or do
not carry enough.

Anna
E., a sex worker, told HRW: “Am I afraid to carry condoms? Yes I was for a long
time. When I was working on the street, I felt like I could only carry two or
three, not a lot when I went out…”

Alexa
L. said: “I
use condoms. I take a lot of care of myself. But the police affect our ability to
carry them. Sometimes I’m afraid and have not used them. I am very worried
about my health.”

HIV
is not the only danger. STDs such as Chlamydia, which if undetected can lead to
infertility, and HPV, which can cause cervical cancer, are much easier to
spread and can cause permanent damage and even death.

As
the report shows, the harassment of sex workers and those perceived by police
to be sex workers on the basis of condom possession is just the tip of the
iceberg. For sex workers and transgender women, who are frequently profiled by
police as being sex workers, contact with the police often means verbal and
physical abuse (including rape), extortion, fines, and for undocumented
immigrants, deportation.

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The
criminalization and stigmatization of sex work, which is illegal in 49 US
states, provides the context (and an important pretext) for police abuse and harassment.

In
general, sex work is not by any means a victimless phenomenon. Millions of
women, including young girls are the victims of sex trafficking, kidnapped and
forced into sex work or sex slavery, their earnings enriching organized crime
syndicates who terrorize and brutalize their victims.

Others
are compelled by discrimination and economic necessity to engage in sex work
when they otherwise would choose not to. This is especially the case for
transgender women. A survey by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and National Center for Transgender Equality found that 16% of transgender
respondents had been forced to engage in sex work and/or sell drugs or other
illegal activities for survival purposes. This is as a result of widespread
discrimination against transgender people, who face incredibly elevated rates
of poverty, homelessness, and unemployment.

However,
it’s important to note that there are sex workers who choose to engage in sex
work as freely as anyone else chooses to work a job under capitalism.

Sex
workers themselves are organizing for decriminalization, and should be supported.
Beyond that, arguments in favor of criminalization as a way to protect sex
workers fall apart when one looks at who is charged with enforcing the laws,
and what are the actual outcomes of enforcement of laws banning anti-prostitution.

The
HRW report points out that in 2011, the NYPD made just over four thousand prostitution-related
arrests. Of these, 64% were arrests of alleged sex workers (for “prostitution”
or “loitering for prostitution”), and 29% were arrests of “johns” who patronize
them. Just 35 arrests were made for sex trafficking (0.9%), and 6 for
compelling prostitution (0.1%).

Sex
workers themselves are the target of nearly two-thirds of all arrests, and like
the war on drugs, the vast majority of arrests are for “street-level” crimes,
while the pimps and sex traffickers for the most part go free, making up just
1% of prostitution-related arrests.

Rather
than protecting sex workers, an encounter with police is often likely to lead
to victimization and abuse. Police frequently commit crimes against sex workers
that are far worse than the misdemeanor charge they arrest them for.

A fact sheet by INCITE! entitled “Policing Sex Work” points out that a “2002 study
found that 30% of exotic dancers and 24% of street-based sex workers who had
been raped identified a police officer as the rapist. Approximately 20 % of other
acts of sexual violence reported by study participants were committed by the
police…extortion of sexual acts in exchange for avoiding arrest or further
violence, public strip searches, physical violence, as well as overtly sexist,
homophobic, racist and transphobic verbal abuse of sex workers by police officers
are an all too common experiences for indoor and street-based sex workers.”

Sexism
and transphobia intersect with racism in such a way that Black and Latina sex
workers, especially transgender women, face the highest rates of abuse and
brutality at the hands of the police.

According to the NGLTF report, 38% of Black transgender people who have encountered police reported having been harassed by police, 15% were physically assaulted, and 7% were sexually assaulted.

And
undocumented immigrants face the added fear of deportation following an arrest,
especially given the implementation of “Secure Communities,” which involves
increase cooperation between local law enforcement and Immigration and Customs
Enforcement (ICE) officials.

The
HRW report confirms this. Brenda D. told HRW that:

“I went into a
car with a person. He said he was a police officer and said ‘if you help me I’ll
help you.’ He said he wanted oral sex. He showed me a badge. He said if I didn’t
have oral sex with him he would call the police and arrest me for prostitution.”

Tara
A., a transgender woman, told HRW about her experience following an arrest:

“I spent 24 hours
in Central Booking in Queens. Just 24 hours in hell…you have to go in an area
with men. It’s not just being arrested…men were insulting me, saying ‘faggot.’
I felt discriminated when they took my fingerprints, they put on gloves, like
they were disgusted. They made fun of me, the police officers. Sometimes I’d
walk by the men and they’d say ‘you’re pretty.’ The police officer would say ‘she’s
not a woman, she’s a man.’"

The
criminalization of sex work, and the stigmatization attached to it, means that
sex workers live in the shadows, in fear of exposing the abuse they face,
whether from the police or from johns, pimps or sex traffickers.
Decriminalization would not solve all of the problems facing sex workers, but
it is a precondition for them to win meaningful rights as workers.

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The
realities exposed by HRW’s report illuminate another important point: conquering
the HIV epidemic is not just a matter of handing out free condoms or educating
people on how to have safe sex. Although these are important steps, deeper
institutional and societal change is needed.

Dealing
with the HIV epidemic requires addressing the factors (unemployment, poverty,
homelessness, legal and de facto discrimination, transphobia, sexism, etc.)
that force people to put themselves at risk in order to survive.

It
is going to take the self-organization of the oppressed, in this case sex
workers and transgender women, joining forces with others (such as the broader
Black and Latino communities) who are also targeted by the police.

And
ultimately it will require the dismantling of the racist, sexist, anti-LGBT,
and xenophobic system of mass incarceration of which the routine harassment of
small-time “offenders” like drug users and sex workers is simply a gateway to a
lifetime of second-class status.

These
are all goals we should keep in mind, but we are a long way from achieving
that. For now, the growing movement against racial profiling and brutality
should stand with sex workers and transgender victims of police brutality.

Walking
around with a pack of condoms (or a dime bag of weed) should not mean risking
being targeted, humiliated, and/or brutalized by those supposedly charged to “protect
and serve.”